Monday, December 31, 2018

Berlin’s Splitter Orchester is a goldmine of great musicians that make
great recordings. I enjoy the orchestra’s recordings, particularly 2016’s Creative Construction Set™ with George Lewis, but the real treats
are the recordings of its members in smaller formats. Matthias Müller’s Solo Trombone was one of the albums I listened to most last year; Blurred Music from Biliana Voutchkova and Michael Thieke is in my
heavy rotation for this year. Many of the Splitter musicians began
recording well before the orchestra did, in 2016, or even before the
orchestra established itself, in 2010, but the orchestra provides a
convenient reference as well as a roster of musicians with a similar sound.
That sound can be characterized by a quieter, pensive exploration of the
timbral nooks and crannies of an instrument that is often achieved through
heavy use of extended technique, prepared, constructed, and/or tailored
instruments, and a process-based approach; it often teeters on the edge of
feeling over-intellectualized or sanitized, but more often than not comes
across as organic sonic wanderlust.

Rhythm Complication
continues in the vein of that sound. It is 69 minutes across 4 tracks. Each
track is a collage cutting from six live duo sets from Burkhard Beins
(percussion, Splitter member) and Clayton Thomas (bass, ex-Splitter member)
and from eight live solo sets performed by seven musicians before each duo
performance. Those seven musicians are Splitter members Liz Albee
(trumpet), Robin Hayward (tuba), Matthias Müller (trombone), and Magda
Mayas (piano) as well as Hilary Jeffery (trombone), Thomas Meadowcroft
(organ, tape machine), and Chris Abrahams (piano, DX7 synthesizer, most
famously of The Necks). The brass solos (and four bass/percussion duos)
were recorded in 2010 and are collated in the first two tracks; the
keyboard solos (and two bass/percussion duos) were recorded in 2012 and are
collected in the last two tracks. Despite the sonic puzzle, the pieces’
lines are blurred and each track usually seems as if it was performed
together, all at once, organically.

On the first track, “Rhythm Complication & Brass I,” Albee and Jeffery
join Beins and Thomas, but not for some time. The first minute or so
showcases a tight call and response between Beins’ bass drum and clanging
metal and Thomas’ striking and bowing. This transitions into Guyesque
extended techniques and scraping and tapping percussion that recalls a ball
rolling in a roulette wheel. With some stops and starts that include some
beautiful bell and gong accents from Beins, the rolling ball gets faster
and louder, an accelerating pulse is added by the bass drum, and the duo
climaxes into a kind of primitive bashing before retiring to a spacious
call and response. At which point Jeffery comes in sounding like a
deflating balloon moaning and Albee answers with a line like a stuttering
clock hand. The brass ebbs in a couple times each before the conversation
between Beins and Thomas fills the space and closes out the track.

“Rhythm Complication & Brass II” starts out with Albee, Hayward, and
Jeffery ambling around each other until they arrive to an undulating drone
over which Albee repeats a three-tone statement. Shuddering cymbals and
chimes come in with a faint bass drum pulse and a metallic drone that
sounds like rimming a crystal glass. They are eventually joined with some
breathy gurgling by Müller before Thomas’ abrupt sawing kicks out the
brass. For some time, Beins works with the crystal drone while Thomas comes
back to the roulette technique and some tapping until an abrupt clash
brings the brass back in, another clash summons two more brass solos, and
another dispels the brass. Beins and Thomas engage in a chaotic jam until
they are again joined by Hayward’s droning and Müller’s breathy work, then
by Jeffery and Albee’s moaning horns. Everyone is eventually silenced by
Hayward’s tuba turned fog horn, which turns melodic as the track ends.

“Rhythm Complication & Keys I” begins with two overdubbed Abrahams
solos: (1) his characteristic piano of Reich-like canons that move forward
like an ascending spiral and even seem to expand and contract in space like
a spring; and (2) a beeping synthesizer that occasionally works itself up
into sputtering distortion only to return to a metronomic bleep. After some
building, Abrahams is joined by the scraping cymbals of Beins and bowed
accents from Thomas. Eventually, Abrahams reaches an ominous, deep rolling
thunder on the piano, which is complimented by an earthquaked bass and some
high tension metallic shimmers cutting through it all. Abrahams is drowned
out by a righteous percussive racket and bowed bass as the track comes to a
climax before an abrupt end.

“Rhythm Complication & Keys II” first features Meadowcroft recording,
rewinding, and creating tape screeches out of a warm organ chord (perhaps
at different distances from the mic) while Beins and Thomas demonstrate the
most driving rhythm on the album yet. Meadowcroft drops out to rapid bowing
and a circular drum beat. With a hefty drum hit, the track transitions to a
melancholy melody from Mayas while Thomas slaps the body of his bass and
Beins scrapes his cymbals. Meadowcroft’s now humming, spiritual organ edges
in under screeching cymbals. Soon Mayas can be heard inside the piano, and
her guitar-like strumming is complemented by flute-like scraping from
Beins. Meadowcroft’s tape screeches return along with an organ vamp and
Mayas’ melancholy melody from earlier returns too. A woody racket from
Beins and Thomas increases in volume and space but fades, as the album ends
with Beins almost keeping time with his sticks, Mayas’ hammering on a note,
and Meadowcroft’s rewinding organ sounding further and further from the
mic.
Recommended.